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The media-pundit-advertiser industrial cycle has discovered that turning life into a sporting event (with winners and losers, villians and heroes and most of all, black and white issues) is profitable.
By turning our life into a game and our issues into drama, the punditocracy and the media-industrial complex profits. And the rest of us lose.
Politics get this treatment, but so do natural disasters, poverty and even technology.
How long does it take after an event occurs before the spinning starts? And because we've seen the spinning acted out on such a large scale, we begin to do it ourselves. We create office drama that replaces the real-life nuance of difficult decisions, and we seek out wins in our personal life when life is always about compromise.
This is dehumanizing, because it turns pathos into ratings and makes just about everyone into 'the other', not someone deserving more than clicks, linkbait and trolling.
It's so easy to boil whatever happened down to a finite number of characters, to engage in online debates with people we'll never meet and to gamify just about everything.
I'm not sure there's any number of Facebook likes that can replace a hug.
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Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis |
China Ponders Tariffs on EU Wine in Response to EU Tariffs on Solar Panels; Repetitive Stupidity Posted: 05 Jun 2013 09:45 PM PDT No one wins a trade war. Ever. Not countries, not companies, and certainly not consumers. Yet, here we go again. People's Daily says China has more cards to play in EU trade dispute. China still has plenty more cards to play in an increasingly ugly trade dispute with the European Union, the official People's Daily newspaper said on Thursday, accusing Europe of not realizing that its global power was waning.Repetitive Stupidity Time and time again, politicians place tariffs to "protect" jobs. In turn this provokes retaliation. This retaliation by China is mild so far. The implied threat is tariffs on Airbus or industrial components from Germany. Chancellor Merkel understands this which is precisely why Germany was against the tariffs on solar panels, even though a German manufacturer was in play. I have talked about this before. Here is a snip from EU On Collision Course With Germany Over Tariffs; Yet Another Reason for UK to Exit EU written May 20, 2013. Damage of TariffsKrugman "Was" Right! Inquiring minds may also wish to read Paul Krugman "Was" Right. How and Why We Forget the ObviousMike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Posted: 05 Jun 2013 08:14 AM PDT Inquiring minds are digging into the stunningly bad Quarter-Over-Quarter decline in wages and real wages across all sectors as noted in the Revised First Quarter BLS Productivity and Costs report.
Year-Over-Year numbers are still positive but the revised quarterly numbers shown above are an unmitigated disaster. The BLS notes "Unit labor costs in nonfarm businesses fell 4.3 percent in the first quarter of 2013, the combined effect of a 3.8 percent decrease in hourly compensation and the 0.5 percent increase in productivity. The decline in hourly compensation is the largest in the series, which begins in 1947." What's Going On? It's quite easy to explain why this is happening, and it was all too predictable as well. Obamacare and inane Fed policies are in play as noted yesterday in Fed Policies and Obama Programs Exacerbate Credit Crunch to Small Businesses. The Fed believes that holding interest rates low fosters business growth, hiring, and bank lending?Results In Today The results are in today. The Fed and Obama are both engaging in counterproductive policies that discourage hiring, especially hiring of full-time employees. Of course Obama will respond by asking for a raise in minimum wage (giving further incentives to businesses to seek ways to get rid of employees), and the Fed will vow to keep interest rates low (enabling companies to borrow money for next to nothing to do just that). Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
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